Our School Council meetings take place every month so that I can share my thoughts and make some decisions alongside representatives from every class.  They, in turn, read minutes back to the rest of their class and discuss the items we spoke about.

For a while now, some of the year 6 children have made comments about portion sizes being small at lunchtime and so we thought we’d invite Keri along to show us what she serves, compared to what Government recommend for Primary aged children…. and they were really quite surprised with the examples Keri brought along!

Despite the Government guidelines being the same for all children under 12, we learnt that Keri serves bigger and also individualised portion sizes knowing what the children like and don’t like, as well as their habits of eating small, or eating lots.  The smaller children get slightly less, the bigger children get slightly more and she knows some who may get just a touch more again – and  all of these are more than Government guidelines.

Now, don’t go and think that Keri’s portions are too big after this… after all, we’ve had some ‘complaints’ that they still too small!  No, they’re good sizes, and healthy too.  (We also learnt that there’s some hidden good stuff in our food, like sweet potato and butternut squashes in some sauces, onions and mushrooms in the pasta’s tomato sauce as well as courgette in the chocolate cake.  Our birthday boy was quite surprised by this!)

I recall the Ofsted Inspector sat next to some Class 4 children during lunchtime to get the gossip about how looked after they felt and when asked, he replied to the group that the food looked absolutely great and he wished he’d not brought shop-bought sandwiches – the sort that’s packaged in single-use plastic no less!  I mentioned portion sizes to him in one of our discussions and he shooed it away – “Oh, they looked amazing,” he said.

So portion sizes are absolutely fine… and hopefully the photos can show you this.

  • Not forgetting that there’s chilli to be placed on top of the rice, and
  • Sauce to be added to that pasta, and
  • Our salad bar is limit-less.

We also wondered whether we should we make a leaflet to tell our parents about things, like…

  • Snacks are provided for Class 1 and 2 at playtime.
  • Looking at the menu in the morning or night before to help with decisions in the morning.
  • The menu is linked on the website.
  • Keri is ALWAYS willing (and mostly available) to talk about about ANY issues.
  • Recommended packed lunch portion sizes – not TOO BIG please!
  • Healthy packed lunches – healthy without too much sugar.
  • Putting in a snack for hungry / ‘growing’ children for the end of the day?
  • Packed lunches being plastic free… attempting to be at least.
  • Packed lunches rubbish goes home so parents can see what they’ve eaten.